There is a scene in the movie where Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga) is given a lie detector test because the CIA suspects that she leaked her own identity. Rod Lurie brought in a real life polygraphist to polygraph her for the scene. He asked her if her name was Erica Van Doren and if she worked for the CIA. After the scene was over the polygraphist called Lurie over to tell him that Farmiga beat the polygraph test because the machine said that she was telling the truth.
The plot loosely incorporates the real-life drama of former CIA agent Valerie Plame and New York Times writer Judith Miller (who served 85 days in jail on the same charges). Valerie Plame's story was eventually adapted into a feature film starring Naomi Watts in Fair Game - Caccia alla spia (2010).
Floyd Abrams, who plays the judge in the film and is also credited as technical advisor, is a real-life attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for which he has litigated cases raising issues of First Amendment rights and national security similar to those at the heart of the film's plot.
Due to The Yari Film Group (the film's distributor) filing a Chapter 11 protection (Bankruptcy Code), the film was never given a theatrical release outside of Los Angeles and New York.
This could viewed as a companion to the film Fair Game - Caccia alla spia (2010). While Nothing But the Truth is about a fictitious assassination plot involving Venezuela, the actual scandal was about the U.S. abandoning its local assets in Iran - assets to whom their handler, a female CIA operative, had pledged to spirit out of the country. She was ordered not to save them but tried anyway and was prevented from doing so, resulting in the deaths of those assets. The woman's husband was a former ambassador who wrote an op ed piece calling the administration to account. When the reporter outed the CIA operative, the operative was fired and both she and her husband were bullied and harassed by the administration. Fair Game presents the true story from the perspective of the former CIA operative and her husband.